jan 24, 1984 - Macintosh 128K release

Description:

Price: equivalent to US$6,100 in 2019
70,000 units by may

The Macintosh also spawned the concept of Mac evangelism, which was pioneered by Apple employee, and later Apple Fellow, Guy Kawasaki.

The built-in display was a one-bit black-and-white, 9 in (23 cm) CRT with a fixed resolution of 512 × 342 pixels, establishing the desktop publishing standard of 72 PPI. Expansion and networking were achieved using two non-standard RS-422 DE-9 serial ports named "printer" and "modem"; they did not support hardware handshaking. An external floppy disk drive could be added using a proprietary connector (19-pin D-sub). The keyboard and mouse used simple proprietary protocols, allowing some third-party upgrades. The original keyboard had no arrow keys, numeric keypad or function keys. This was an intentional decision by Apple, as these keys were common on older platforms and it was thought that the addition of these keys would encourage software developers to simply port their existing applications to the Mac, rather than design new ones around the GUI paradigm. Later, Apple made a numeric keypad available for the Macintosh 128K. The keyboard sold with the newer Macintosh Plus model included the numeric keypad and arrow keys, but still no function keys. As with the Apple Lisa before it, the mouse had a single button. Standard headphones could also be connected to a monaural jack. Apple also offered their 300 and 1200 bit/s modems originally released for the Apple II line. Initially, the only printer available was the Apple ImageWriter, a dot matrix printer which was designed to produce 144 dpi WYSIWYG output from the Mac's 72 dpi screen. Eventually, the LaserWriter and other printers were capable of being connected using AppleTalk, Apple's built-in networking system.

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